It's like this

That's all I'm saying. Just that.

I have the coolest boyfriend ever

He just sent me an email saying he read my blog and bought me a blunderbuss domain. I think that may qualify as the second greatest present I've ever gotten.

Here's George Jetson

You know that moment at the beginning of the Jetsons when George Jetson is taking Astro for a walk on the automatic sidewalk and he can't keep up with the conveyer belt and starts spinning around and around?

That's exactly how I feel today. Like I'm trying to fit a size twelve life into a size eight dress.

But you know what? I've got Mission of Burma playing, and I'll be damned if it's not making me feel better. Academy Fight Song has lost nothing in the more than twenty years since it came out.

And I bought tickets to see the Walkmen in a couple of weeks yesterday. And that makes me feel better too.

And it's Friday.

And I look cute today. (I maintain just because someone has sucked all of the oxygen out of the room is no reason not to wear lipstick.)

The things I think about at work

I know I used to be a political blogger once upon a time. And someday I will return to that in a more serious way (in the meantime, just be aware that I haven't forgotten the world is still going to hell). But it's all I can do to blog these ridiculous orts while I'm as busy as I've been.

Today was one of those days at work where everyone was just in my hair and I couldn't seem to dispense with anything (task or person) easily. Last week when I was having a day like this, K sent me an email with this picture:

18th Cent. flintlock Blunderbuss that scatters shot, nails, rocks, ceramic fragments or whatever through a crowd.

And now when I get frustrated I think about how great it would be to have a blunderbuss. And then I think "blunderbuss...hee hee...blunderbuss..." and before I know it, I've been cheered up.

(As an aside, I got to thinking today that Blunderbuss would be a great name for a literary magazine or a blog. It's a sort of goulash shrapnel idea. Think about it for a minute--it's like scrapbooking for arsonists or something.)

But today the blunderbuss fantasy wasn't enough. As more and more people kept popping into my doorway, the fantasy today began taking on a Godzilla-ish cast. I so totally wish I could blow lethal fire through my nostrils. Never mind killing people by pelting them with tiny pieces of fiestaware, I want to be able to incinerate them without taking my hands off the keyboard.

So that's where I'm at. Oh, and Ken Lay is going to jail. So it's not all bad.

Quote of the day

From Nick:

"Here's an interesting fact: If you wish to become a resident of this country, you must find an elderly doctor to touch you just behind the testicals while you cough."

My friends are all brilliant

Okay, I suppose it's a cop-out that all I seem to do is repost emails I get from my friends lately. But it's not just because I'm drowning in work. It's also that my friends are damn funny. This comes from an email C sent me yesterday, and it's just a great paragraph:

i've been checking your blog sporadically enough to have heard about k (hooray for great companionship!), his wreck (boo for fear and stress and anxiety) and his new elbow (hooray for medical science!). it's funny to me to realize that i don't really know anything about your life, but to feel like i do. blogs are so great. almost as great as faulkner, with whom i am having some kind of post-graduate-school love affair. why did i never realize that his writing is really, truly beautiful? (perhaps because i was always so busy being grateful that at least southerners are more fucked up than mormons. thank god somebody is.)

Just click your heels together...

The man on the left, the one wearing a fabulous vintage chiffon-lined Dior gold lame gown over a silk Vera Wang empire waist tulle cocktail dress, accessorized with a 3-foot beaded peaked House of Whoville hat, and the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in the Wizard of Oz, is worried that The Da Vinci Code might make the Roman Catholic Church look foolish.

(I got the above from my friend SK and in my opinion, the shoes really make it.)

5-7-5

From Master Kim comes word of Newsweek's latest feature--celebrity haiku (you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page):

Ashlee Nose Best
That bump on my schnoz,
like my sister's spouse, is gone.
Nose job? I am coy.

Clean-Plate Club
Like a waterfall,
my confession tumbles forth:
I don't eat, like, ever.

Dawn of the Spawn
Out, out, damned K-Fed!
Wait, don't go: impregnate me,
baby, one more time.

I like it.

W stands for "the worm turns"

President Bush . . . has a positive job approval in just three of the 50 United States. This according to 50 separate but concurrent statewide public opinion polls conducted by SurveyUSA for its media clients across the country. Only residents of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho view the president favorably.

Dog dag

So K is collecting daguerreotypes, and like any good collector, surfing e-bay daily for the pickings. (Dags, I only found out from him, are not reproducible. The image is the plate. And they take two minutes to expose, so the subjects have to stay still for the whole time. Thus some people used braces to hold people in place, and you rarely see a picture with an animal.)

Today he sends me the below.


Which apparently comes with this explanatory note


"Sylvester Beardsley, Louise Beardsley, Grandma Ann Beardsley's dog. When she went away, she missed him just like she did the kids. When he died, they had his skin tanned and Aunt Nettie Hogan's feet were wrapped in (it) the skin when she was buried."

How fantastic is that?

We'll always have Paris

Those bunnies are at it again. This time Angry Alien gives us Casablanca. (This and the surrounding posts brought to you by my favorite retoucher.)

Quote of the day

"Quality is not for everyone."

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program

of lamentation and gnashing of teeth for a truly silly video of talking cats.

One tough bitch

Via Boing Boing comes the story of the 80-year-old woman who got this tattooed on her chest. And yes, she did get a senior discount at the tattoo parlor.

More on swoops and swoopers

Below I parenthetically muse "what is a fell swoop anyway?" and of course, given who my friends are, I immediately got two answers to my question. I rather like the idea that a fell swoop is a speedy and fatal thing.

Then today, I came across this description of writers as swoopers and bashers, which seemed worth sharing.

And yes, my work life continues in a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" sort of fashion. Next week will be better. Tomorrow, I descend into a conference room for three days because, god knows, I haven't spent enough time in meetings lately. Sigh.

I always knew he was French

From Frat Boy's "but who will we get to do the yard work" speech last night:

Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language.

Um...yeah...um...Unless you're president. If you're president, you only need to respect the flag; you get a pass on the other two.

The full text of the speech is available on WorldNetDaily, whose fantastically xenophobic perspective reveals itself in the very first line--the title "Invasion USA." I can't even bring myself to paste in their "is that the sound of jackboots I hear" public opinion poll everyone is citing today.

Can you hear me sighing over here?

Anyway I am too busy at work to really climb up on my soap box for a harangue of any duration. Let me just extract this section of the speech. It's worth reading all the way through even though it's long:

By the end of 2008, we will increase the number of Border Patrol officers by an additional 6,000. When these new agents are deployed, we will have more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol during my presidency.

At the same time, we are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We will employ motion sensors infrared cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings. America has the best technology in the world and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border.

Training thousands of new Border Patrol agents and bringing the most advanced technology to the border will take time. Yet the need to secure our border is urgent. So I am announcing several immediate steps to strengthen border enforcement during this period of transition:

One way to help during this transition is to use the National Guard. So in coordination with governors, up to 6,000 Guard members will be deployed to our southern border. The Border Patrol will remain in the lead. The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems analyzing intelligence installing fences and vehicle barriers building patrol roads and providing training. Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities that duty will be done by the Border Patrol. This initial commitment of Guard members would last for a period of one year. After that, the number of Guard forces will be reduced as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online. It is important for Americans to know that we have enough Guard forces to win the war on terror, respond to natural disasters, and help secure our border.

The United States is not going to militarize the southern border. Mexico is our neighbor, and our friend.

Help me! I'm trapped in a dystopic novel! War is peace. Freedom is slavery. (And it's not "militarization" if we're not actively dropping bombs on people, or something.)

As for me, work will set me free, so I'm getting back to it.

Failure at transnational culture

That's what Andrea is calling it. Me--I'm in a meeting most of the day, so that's what I've got for you right now.

From our Albuquerque correspondent

I just read Shane's quote at NMTE and spat my drink @ the screen. Actually just got back from the mechanic myself but was not so fabulously appointed. If, however, I had two buttholes, I would be getting f*d in both of them, trying to score a new fan in the desert heat. Popular item out here, I see.

Getting fucked--Sometimes a good thing. Sometimes not so good.

Film at eleven

Okay, I was going to add this link under an "update" header below, but White Bear inspired me to give it it's own post. More about K's crash and K himself can be found here. Everyone go say hello to my boyfriend and boost his hits for the day.

And Carrie--yes, he's good with a screwdriver--though he's better with a camera. My one-line review is, "How can you not like a guy who owns guns and reads Dwell magazine?" He's smart as hell but not an academic, and given my own temperament, that's probably good (I once ground a seminar discussion to a screeching halt when, in the middle of a discussion about whether or not we understand everything through language, I asked, "Am I the only one who's had good sex in here? Describe an orgasm in language." Yeah.)

Anyway, I have a huge crush on him, and so far, so good.

Line of the day

Shane on finding out his car repair is relatively minor:

"Can I tell you how happy I am? I'm as happy as a sissy with two butt holes that it's my thermostat and not my head gasket that needs repairing."

The elbow

Below I make reference to what an outstanding investment good motorcycle gear is, and I am inspired to explain myself a bit more clearly if only to properly make sense of these photographs. They are taken with a phone and don't do the hardware complete justice, but they're worth sharing nonetheless.



What you see here is my boyfriend's arm. It didn't always look like that. Yes, always one to favor the dramatic, I managed to obtain a boyfriend and a patient almost at one fell swoop. (What is a "fell swoop" anyway?) For his part, he picked up some swell hardware on his way to my apartment.

(Those who know me, know that I am no stranger to visiting lovers in the trauma unit. I'm calling it progress that K ended up there because of an accident rather than a "head in natural gas oven" type of incident.) In any case, said bf is quite on the mend, thanks in part I do believe, to my excellent nursing skills (which happily are no longer needed).
You can't really see the full Steve Austin glory of the thing here, but it does look like someone threw down a handful of stuff from a bargain bin at Home Depot. Being a retoucher, he annotated the x-rays for you. Myself, my text would have read more like "can you believe that shit?"

We have determined that if he were in a Dick Tracy story line, he would be called "the elbow."

"How shall the heart be reconciled...

...to its feast of losses?"

Stanley Kunitz died yesterday at 100.

Here is one of his for you:

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation

Since that first morning when I crawled
into the world, a naked grubby thing,
and found the world unkind,
my dearest faith has been that this
is but a trial: I shall be changed.
In my imaginings I have already spent
my brooding winter underground,
unfolded silky powdered wings, and climbed
into the air, free as a puff of cloud
to sail over the steaming fields,
alighting anywhere I pleased,
thrusting into deep tubular flowers.

It is not so: there may be nectar
in those cups, but not for me.
All day, all night, I carry on my back
embedded in my flesh, two rows
of little white cocoons,
so neatly stacked
they look like eggs in a crate.
And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough
I'll try to burrow under a stone
and spin myself a purse
in which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won't be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.

Sir, you with the red snippers
in your hand, hovering over me,
casting your shadow, I greet you,
whether you come as an angel of death
or of mercy. But tell me,
before you choose to slice me in two:
Who can understand the ways
of the Great Worm in the Sky?

(Thanks to Kim for the email.)